Chapter 3649
Although the journey to visit the Special Warfare Division is long, there are many places worth visiting along the way. The first is the Dumai Oilfield located in the Strait of Malacca, five hundred miles west of Sing Tao.
Dong Shangyi can be said to be both familiar and unfamiliar with the oil field. We are familiar with it because the island of Taiwan, which is only more than 300 miles away from Fujian, is the site of Haihan's first oil well, and the Chusangkeng Oilfield is still being exploited today.
As an extremely important industrial resource, the Executive Committee has always attached great importance to petroleum. It has invested a lot of resources in Chusangkeng Oilfield and built supporting petrochemical industries. The local area has thus become the most important industrial center on the island of Taiwan.
And it is unfamiliar because the extraction, refining and use of oil are completely advanced technologies that transcend the times for ordinary people, and Dong Shangyi is no exception. Moreover, due to the special relationship between Taiwan and Fujian, he basically did not have the opportunity to visit the oil field site, and could only obtain limited information through some intelligence channels.
However, Dong Shangyi has some experience in using products from the petrochemical industry. The fuel kerosene added to his favorite windproof oil lamp and the lighter he carries with him is said to be derived from petroleum extracts.
It is said that fuel extracted from petroleum can be used in mechanical equipment that is more advanced than steam engines to create more powerful power, allowing people to have supernatural powers to heaven and earth. Dong Shangyi believes that this is probably what the Executive Committee pays special attention to. One of the reasons for oil extraction.
Taiwan's Chushankeng Oilfield was a place Dong Shangyi could not go to, but the Dumai Oilfield under the jurisdiction of Xingdao opened its door to him. Dong Shangyi would not let go of this rare opportunity.
If you learn more about the relevant knowledge, maybe oil will be found in Fujian's jurisdiction in the future, and you can organize its own exploration and processing.
But when he landed and saw the production site of Dumai Oil Field with his own eyes, he realized how naive his idea was.
Looking around, you can see the tall derricks, huge oil storage tanks, and various pipes winding between them, all made of metal and stretching for miles.
These production equipment alone may consume no less than tens of millions of kilograms of refined steel, which is simply not something Fujian can afford on its own.
The officials accompanying the visit all proudly introduced to Dong Shangyi that since the oil field was put into production in 1649, a large number of petroleum products have been produced for Haihan here, and extremely generous economic benefits have been achieved.
As Haihan Industry's demand for petrochemical supplies increases, the scale of production here will continue to increase. It is expected that in the next few decades, Dumai Oilfield will be in a state of continuous construction and expansion of production capacity.
Dong Shangyi asked: "The output here should also be shipped out by ship, right?"
The accompanying official nodded and said: "In the entire Xingdao region, we are the only one with an independent cargo fleet that is responsible for transporting petroleum products to Sanya and other places."
Officials immediately explained that ordinary cargo ships can generally transport other materials, but petroleum products are an exception. All types of fuel need to be stored in metal tanks for transportation, which must be carried by oil ships with special structures. Therefore, in addition to maintaining the operation of production facilities, the Dumai Oilfield also maintains an exclusive transport fleet. Dong Shangyi's original intention in asking about this was to see if there was any chance for Fujian shipping companies to take over the freight business here. However, judging from the other party's answer, this was obviously unrealistic. Fujian's cargo ships did not have the special requirements for transporting petrochemical products. Due to the conditions, I could only quietly give up the idea.
Dong Shangyi immediately changed the topic and curiously asked how the production efficiency of Dumai Oilfield compared with mines in Batam Island, Bangka Island and other places.
The official said disapprovingly: "How can those mines that require a large number of miners to dig day and night compare with ours? Look at what we use here are mechanical equipment, and the manpower requirements are only a few tenths of those in the mines, but we can still do it. To produce non-stop day and night.”
Dong Shangyi thought, but that mine can arrange work with shovels, hoes, and bamboo baskets, but your oil field requires a lot of initial investment to produce output, which is not comparable to those mines.
Dong Shangyi stayed in Dumai for two days. Before leaving, he specially purchased several hundred kilograms of kerosene to take away as a souvenir. The price of production here is fully half cheaper than that in Fujian, which is thousands of miles away. You can save a lot of money both inside and outside.
Across the Strait of Malacca from Dumai is the city of Malacca under Portuguese jurisdiction. When Dong Shangyi planned his trip before departure, he had already listed Malacca City as one of his destinations.
He wanted to see with his own eyes the level of Portugal, which had been operating in Southeast Asia for the longest time and built the largest colony.
However, the results of the on-site visit made him a little disappointed. Except for the city defense project, Malacca City was not bad, and other infrastructure facilities were far inferior to the port city of Haihan.
Especially the port, which is the face of the city, is dirty and messy. The docks are full of rats and drunkards. The port facilities are also extremely primitive. They are not at the same level as the port operations seen previously in Xingdao. superior. It’s no wonder that in just over 20 years since Haihan built Sing Tao Port, it has basically replaced the trading status of Malacca City.
Moreover, Dong Shangyi noticed that the Portuguese trading houses here did not have many products to offer, and most of the transactions they did were re-export trade, that is, they acted as middlemen in East-West trade.
The products on the shelves either come from Europe and the Middle East or from East Asia. Only about 20% are produced locally, and most of them are based on various spices.
Dong Shangyi knew that various spices were grown in large areas in Xingdao and Luzon. Both production capacity and cost were much better than Portugal's colonial output. Therefore, in the spice business, Portuguese trading houses have no advantage at all, and most of them can only be shipped back to China for sale.
If Haihan's shipping capacity can grow rapidly, the role of Portuguese commercial banks as middlemen may be gradually replaced by Haihan in a few years.
Dong Shangyi noticed that there were very few Han people inside and outside Malacca. After asking, he learned that anyone with a bit of Han ancestry had gone to Star Island to make a living in recent years. The Han people could get better living conditions and working conditions there, and gradually few people were willing to stay here and work for the Portuguese.
The Portuguese can only hire locals for low-level jobs, but obviously the comprehensive quality of Southeast Asian ethnic groups cannot be compared with that of the Han people. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the Portuguese have ruled here for more than a hundred years, but the appearance of the city today is still the same. It is not as good as Xingdao, which was built just over 20 years ago.